Opinion
Column

Quelling the fearmongering

Ahn Young-joon/The Associated Press
People watch a TV screen showing images of U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 21. Critics called Kim’s mixed message in his New Year’s Day speech a gambit to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington to weaken U.S.-led international pressures or buy time before perfecting nuclear weapons targeting the United States. The Korean letters on the screen read: "UN sanctions, the blow is not big."

It is undoubtedly true that during his first year in office, President Donald Trump has done immense damage to the interests and image of the United States. His decisions to withdraw the United States from the negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and from the Paris accord on climate change have had negative consequences for his country, not least in that they alienated most of America's trusted allies in Asia and Europe. His Islamophobic diatribes and actions have alienated governments and publics in more than 50 Muslim countries. His decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the American embassy there has provoked anti-American demonstrations throughout the Middle East and beyond. His threats to withdraw from the agreement to limit Iran's nuclear capabilities have produced dismay and despair among friends and foes alike. In short, Trump has been a creator of chaos on the international scene, to the detriment of peace and stability.

That said, things could be much worse. When stacked up against the promises and threats he made during his election campaign, Trump's performance to date has fallen short of the worst predictions made at the time of his entry into the White House. He has not been able to build his much vaunted wall along the Mexican border, let alone get Mexico to pay for it. He has not made much headway on his promise to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants from the United States. He has been unable to persuade Congress to abolish the health insurance scheme known as Obamacare. He has not carried out his threat to impose a 35 per cent tariff on all imports from China and has thus avoided a major trade war. He has backed off his rhetoric on NATO as an "obsolete alliance" and reaffirmed his country's adherence to it. He has made no progress whatsoever in carrying out his promise to develop better relations with the regime of Vladimir Putin, but he has on the contrary imposed new sanctions on Russia. And he has not (yet) abrogated the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he repeatedly described as the "worst" trade agreement the United States had ever entered into. In short, his bark has repeatedly proved worse than his bite.

Why has Trump not carried out all of the promises and threats of his campaign? One would like to believe that he has grown into the office of president, that he has matured and that he has become more thoughtful over time. Unfortunately, there is little evidence of this. Rather the explanation must be found in the American system of government and in the people surrounding him. The president is not an unconstrained dictator, but rather a chief executive whose powers and actions are limited by a well-honed system of checks and balances. First there is the Constitution, then Congress and then the judiciary. All have served to limit Trump's freedom of action (e.g. to build the Mexican wall he must secure funding from Congress). Within the executive branch of government, there are a series of institutions and bureaucracies that can balk at his initiatives and take initiatives of their own, contrary to his wishes (e.g. the Justice Department, which launched the Mueller inquiry into collusion between his campaign organization and Russian operatives). Then there are some of his close advisers, the so-called "adults" in the Trump administration, who can pressure him to take wise decisions and avoid unwise ones.

It is against this background that one should view the ongoing slanging match between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Trump has disparagingly referred to Kim as "little Rocket Man" while Kim has referred to Trump as "an old dotard." This is the kind of language that is unbecoming any head of state and deserves all of the criticism it has engendered. And under the worst of circumstances, it could lead either man to take a fateful decision in order to salvage his pride and prove his manhood. But we are not at that stage yet, and the danger of a shooting war between the United States and North Korea remains rather remote.

On the American side, the president is surrounded by a coterie of highly experienced generals who know full well the horrors that would be inflicted on South Korea, Japan and the United States if war broke out. They can be relied upon to resist any temptation Trump may experience to launch a pre-emptive strike against North Korea. Indeed some of them might be inclined to ignore the president's orders if he were to make the wrong decision. On the North Korean side, Kim Jong Un is a brash, immature braggart given to hollow boasting. He is not, however, an idiot. Kim knows very well that a nuclear-armed missile aimed at the United States would provoke instantaneous and massive retaliation. This would spell out not only the end of his regime, but also the total destruction of his country. Kim may be annoying and thoroughly repulsive, but he has given no indication of being suicidal. But that is precisely what he would be wishing for if he were to take on a country whose nuclear arsenal is a thousand times larger than his.

These realities have done nothing to calm fears being expressed about this issue. On the contrary, there has been a veritable campaign of fearmongering in the media and elsewhere. A recent example is an op-ed page article published earlier this month in the Globe and Mail. Its author was Gerald Caplan, a former functionary of the New Democratic Party, and it was entitled "Is doomsday really upon us?" It is full of dire warnings. Thus it says in part that: "Between North Korea and Washington, Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, it certainly feels as if something qualitatively different, more perilous and threatening, something literally existential, might just be facing us." It goes on to ask with a flourish, "Who believes Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump can be trusted to choose sanity over nuclear Armageddon?"

Terms such as "existential" and "Armageddon" are laden with meaning. They suggest the total destruction of society and civilization as we know it, if not the end of humanity. Do they have any place in assessing the risks of the standoff between North Korea and the United States? The answer is a categorical no. Even if there were (God forbid) a nuclear exchange between North Korea and the United States, it would wreak destruction in both countries. Radioactive dust might well float into neighbouring countries such as South Korea, China, Canada and Mexico. But that would be the extent of it. Europe, Africa, South America and most of Asia would not be adversely affected. Hardly the end of civilization and humanity.

Now there is every reason to hope that the confrontation between North Korea and the United States can be handled diplomatically rather than militarily. A resort to nuclear weapons would not only be highly destructive but would break a 70-year-old taboo on the actual use of such weapons, to the detriment of international peace and security in the future. But the hopes for a diplomatic solution are not being helped by the fearmongers. On the one hand, their sayings and writings are contributing to the creation of an atmosphere of crisis, which is never useful or productive in dealing with this sort of situation. On the other hand, they are playing into the game of a vainglorious tinpot dictator intent on creating fear and uncertainty in the West and beyond. They are, in fact, making a bad situation worse than it need be. The time has come to cool the rhetoric and give diplomacy a chance.

Louis A. Delvoie is a Fellow in the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen's University.